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KAE­FER’s Lean Jour­ney

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Fo­cus­ing on cus­tomer value

LEAN is work­ing. Not just for our cli­ents, but for us as well.

Simply put, LEAN means cre­at­ing more value for our cli­ents as well as for our teams. This is achieved by gen­er­at­ing as close to zero waste as pos­sible by op­tim­ising pro­cesses and con­tinu­ously im­prov­ing them.

The idea is to waste less time, ef­fort, and ma­ter­i­als. We call get­ting things right the first time head­ing to­wards ‘True North’. LEAN Site Man­age­ment guar­an­tees that the right ma­ter­i­als are at the right place at the right time, in the right amount and right qual­ity. It is not about re­in­vent­ing the wheel, but rather about op­tim­ising a proven concept and en­sur­ing that the wheel runs smoothly without any in­ter­rup­tions. Which means em­ploy­ing simple meas­ures such as plan­ning and per­form­ance man­age­ment – think­ing about what to do be­fore, dur­ing and after a shift and how to achieve agreed goals. This al­lows us to achieve higher levels of health, safety, and ef­fi­ciency by get­ting our ser­vices right the first time, while meet­ing all qual­ity re­quire­ments.

LEAN be­ne­fits our cli­ents as much as it be­ne­fits us. Our unique ap­proach to ap­ply­ing and liv­ing it in­volves edu­cat­ing and train­ing our em­ploy­ees through our Lean De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme to not just ‘do’ LEAN, but to ‘be’ LEAN on every step of the way. Be­cause it would be (a) waste if we did­n’t cap­it­al­ise on the ideas of all KAEFER em­ploy­ees when work­ing to­wards a com­mon goal. LEAN makes this pos­sible and em­powers em­ploy­ees to con­struct­ively and cre­at­ively shape the way they work. The re­ward is not just an easier and less waste­ful work­flow, but also an in­vest­ment in the per­sonal de­vel­op­ment of each in­di­vidual at KAEFER.

  • „Success in LEAN is the result of discipline, creativity and productivity and if you turn it into a passion, you will be known as a true leader in business and society. Rajan Nair, Managing Director, KAEFER in Saudi Arabia“
  • „LEAN involves everybody from the MD to the worker on site. Through the lean trainings, you develop yourself, while enabling people around you to grow. And you‘re building an international network to reach other sites and learn new ways of working. Nicolas Allier, Local Lean Leader, KAEFER WANNER in France.“
  • „The new PPM-Board gave me a better night‘s sleep – I do not have to worry as much about tomorrow‘s problem. Johnny Roosens, Site Manager, KAEFER in Belgium“
  • „The training coached us in new ways of thinking. It was fantastic to see the reaction to the problem solving and increased efficiency. The whole team united with towards our common goal, „The fight against waste“. Ian Tattersall, COO, KAEFER in UK & Ireland“

Contact our global expert

Saurabh Deshmukh

Corporate Operations Excellence

His­tory of KAE­FER’s Lean Jour­ney

It may sound like a cliché, but every jour­ney really does be­gin with a first step. KAE­FER’s LEAN Jour­ney began in 2013 while work­ing with cli­ents that ap­plied this meth­od­o­logy them­selves. We saw how well ef­fi­ciency could be in­creased in prac­tice, so the de­cision was taken to start our own LEAN pro­gramme. But we see it as more than just a way to in­crease ef­fi­ciency. For us, LEAN is a qual­i­fic­a­tion pro­gramme – in re­la­tion to our staff as well as to our ser­vices.

Seven pi­lot pro­jects later, it be­came clear that LEAN would be the dir­ec­tion we took in fu­ture. Es­pe­cially since they were not just re­sound­ingly suc­cess­ful, but also fit into KAE­FER’s way of think­ing ex­cep­tion­ally well.
In 2014, the KAEFER LEAN Jour­ney was ex­ten­ded to a fur­ther 100 pro­jects and the global LEAN Leader or­gan­isa­tion was es­tab­lished. 2015 saw the num­ber of pro­ject grow to 150, as well as an ex­ten­ded LEAN De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme for Man­agers. So far, in ad­di­tion to nu­mer­ous LEAN pro­jects, we have suc­cess­fully trained over 2,000 em­ploy­ees in more than 35 coun­tries.

LEAN is work­ing. Not just for our cli­ents, but for us as well. And KAEFER has be­come known for be­ing an am­bas­sador for LEAN as well as a prime ex­ample of how it’s more than a pro­cess, but a way of think­ing.

Lean Prin­ciples at KAEFER

Ima­gine your­self on a con­struc­tion site. A worker is idly wait­ing for ma­ter­i­als to be de­livered. But they haven’t turned up yet. Many times in these cases, people will be afraid to say ‘boss, I have a prob­lem’ be­cause they don’t want to be seen as not work­ing. That wastes time. That’s not LEAN.

LEAN is en­sur­ing that it’s ok to talk to the boss and identify is­sues. As well as solu­tions and sug­ges­tions for im­prove­ment. And LEAN Site Man­age­ment guar­an­tees that the right ma­ter­i­als are at the right place at the right time, in the right amount and right qual­ity.

It is not about re­in­vent­ing the wheel, but rather about op­tim­ising a proven concept and en­sur­ing that the wheel runs smoothly without any in­ter­rup­tions. Which means em­ploy­ing simple meas­ures such as plan­ning and per­form­ance man­age­ment – think­ing about what to do be­fore, dur­ing and after a shift and how to achieve agreed goals.

We call get­ting things right the first time head­ing to­wards ‘True North’. That in­volves cre­at­ing stable work­flows, work­ing with op­timal crew sizes, com­par­ing ac­tual and ex­pec­ted per­form­ance as well as root cause ana­lysis to fur­ther im­prove the pro­cess.

Chal­lenge con­ven­tional be­liefs – without chal­lenge there can be no pro­gress.

Ex­per­i­ment – try it or you’ll never know.

Tol­er­ate fail­ure – im­prove­ment re­quires pa­tience.

Trust – im­prove­ment can­not res­ult in loss of jobs.

Work as a team – total op­tim­isa­tion rather than local (in­di­vidual) op­tim­isa­tion.

Be flex­ible – ri­gid struc­tures/​policies will limit pro­gress.

Be dis­cip­lined – stick to the stand­ards.

KAE­FER’s Lean De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme

Be­ing LEAN means keep­ing the big pic­ture in mind. But it’s also about know­ing that the big pic­ture con­sists of many smal­ler ones. That’s why KAEFER has ex­tens­ive LEAN train­ing for our em­ploy­ees. It’s one of the ways we are dif­fer­ent in ap­ply­ing LEAN, in that we want the maxim of zero waste to run through our blood.

Our LEAN De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme gives our em­ploy­ees the tools to be­come pro­cess im­provers and coaches. It does not mat­ter if it is a Line Man­ager, Pro­ject or Site Man­ager; each em­ployee is trained to take own­er­ship of pro­cess im­prove­ment and to be­come a coach to help oth­ers to de­velop as well. This is achieved with learn­ing about LEAN prin­ciples and meth­od­o­lo­gies and ex­per­i­en­cing their prac­tical ap­plic­a­tions.

The pro­gramme of­fers a range of cer­ti­fic­a­tions: LEAN Prac­ti­tioner, LEAN Pro­fes­sional and LEAN Mas­ter: This al­lows them to build upon their skills, de­velop them­selves and gain valu­able, prac­tical in­sights into how to use LEAN to stay ahead of the game. The re­ward is not just an easier and less waste­ful work­flow, but also an in­vest­ment in the per­sonal de­vel­op­ment of each in­di­vidual man­ager at KAEFER.

Don’t just take our word for it, however. Just ask any of the over 2,000 em­ploy­ees from more than 30 coun­tries that have suc­cess­fully star­ted their train­ing.

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